Meeting Miss Scarlet

My favorite movie of all-time is the 1985 classic Clue. I’ve seen it more times than I can count, and it’s been my favorite movie since I was a kid. Watching and re-watching it on VHS was a core childhood memory. When the opportunity came to see the movie and meet Lesley Ann Warren, aka Miss Scarlet, I jumped at the chance.  

My wife and I met Lesley Ann Warren before the show. With meet and greet things, I feel like you never quite know what it’s going to be like. Do I get 30 seconds with the person, or 3 minutes? But this turned out to be quite a lovely experience. Lesley Ann Warren was just delightful, very nice and sweet. She’s still gorgeous, as you can imagine, with sparkling green eyes, set off by her sparkly green jacket and pants. We each got one item signed by her: I found a very cute 8x10 on eBay of Warren from her terrific role in Victor/Victoria. As she was signing it, I realized that I needed to say something to her, so she knew what a fan of the movie I am. I said what a fan of hers we both are, and especially of her performance as Miss Scarlet. 

I brought along my copy of the 1985 book Clue: The Storybook, which was a large hardcover that was meant for younger readers. As I opened the book for Warren to sign it, she said “What is this?” She had never seen the storybook before! As a devoted Clue nerd, I was very proud of myself. I explained that it was a version of the movie for younger readers, but without most of the jokes. Instead of Mr. Green being gay, he’s having “a sort of an affair.” Warren flipped through it, looking at some of the photos. When she came across a photo of Martin Mull, she said “Oh, there’s my dear sweet Martin.” And on seeing one photo of herself she said, “There’s the dress that looks like it’s always about to fall down but never did.” When we shook hands she said, “Your hands are so warm!”  

Warren was interviewed on stage before the movie. She said she’s working on a one-woman show, which sounds like it would be amazing. Warren really got along well with Martin Mull, and they had a marvelous time cracking each other up on the set. Because her costume was so tight, and because she was wearing a period-appropriate corset, it was difficult if not impossible for Warren to sit down, so she spent a lot of her off-camera time on a leaning board so she could relax but still keep her dress pristine. The costume designer also made a second dress that had a hidden zipper, so Warren could run from room to room with the rest of the cast.  

At the time Clue was released, it was not a box-office smash, and it seemed like it would be just another project that would fade away. But the growing VHS and home rental market, as well as frequent airings on cable TV, gave Clue a remarkable afterlife. Clue was famously released with three different endings—newspaper ads would indicate which theater was showing which ending. It was a gutsy choice for Paramount, and while they were no doubt hoping that audiences would come back and see all three endings, it’s a lot to ask of people to sit through the same 85 minutes of a movie before the last 5 minutes are different. The different endings were a wonderful homage to the board game, as there are 324 possible solutions to the game. That’s 9 times 6 times 6. Or 6 times 6 times 9. But while the multiple endings might have confused audiences in the theaters, on VHS the 3 endings were combined, so we saw them one after the other. This was the perfect way to experience Clue. Warren told the audience that years after Clue had been released, she asked Martin Mull, “Are you getting, like a LOT of fan mail about Clue?” Mull replied, “You too?”  

When I was a little kid watching Clue, obviously a standout performance was Tim Curry as Wadsworth the butler. (“I buttle, sir.”) But watching the movie so many times over the years has given me reasons to appreciate the entire cast’s performances. As Warren said, “We were not comedians, we were all comic actors.” Bingo. And that’s why it worked so well. No one was trying to steal laughs, and they were all good enough actors to make their roles believable. (Well, except for Lee Ving, who is terrible as Mr. Boddy.)  

As a little kid, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Miss Scarlet. I knew we were supposed to find her attractive—she’s a beautiful woman in a stunning dress, after all. But I wasn’t sure what to make of her brash, bold personality. So, I shied away from Miss Scarlet and instead developed a crush on Mrs. White, so exquisitely played by the wonderful Madeline Kahn. The fact that Mrs. White had perhaps killed several of her husbands seemed to have escaped me. (“Husbands should be like Kleenex: soft, strong, and disposable.”)  

Watching Clue as an adult, I’m more drawn to Miss Scarlet. And a large part of that is Warren’s outstanding performance. Miss Scarlet is never scared by the events of the evening; she takes it all in stride and keeps making snappy wisecracks throughout the proceedings. (“It’s my defense mechanism.”) Miss Scarlet is probably the character I’d most want to hang out with. It’s a great performance that just grows with multiple viewings. 

An Appreciation of My Favorite Movie: Clue (1985)

Poster for Clue, 1985.

The cast of Clue. From left to right, Lesley Ann Warren, Martin Mull, Madeline Kahn, Michael McKean, Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, and Eileen Brennan.

The lovely Colleen Camp as Yvette the maid.

Warning: There will be spoilers in this article. If you don’t want to know details about the 3 different endings of Clue, just stop reading here. Or go watch the movie and then come back. 

Confession: Clue is my favorite movie. Why? Well, because it’s hilarious, and because I still find it hilarious even after I’ve seen it many, many times. I first saw Clue at a very early age—not in the theaters, but shortly afterwards on VHS, and it quickly became a staple of my childhood viewing. By the time I was 10 I could quote most of the dialogue. I was also a big fan of the board game Clue, which no doubt helped the movie become such a favorite of mine. Clue wasn’t a hit when it was released in December of 1985, although it soon attracted a small but dedicated following thanks to VHS and TV. 

Recently my wife and I saw Clue again, at the Trylon Cinema in Minneapolis. It was a lot of fun to see it on the big screen with a packed house. (I’d seen Clue on the big screen once before, at one of the midnight screenings at the Uptown Theater.) One thing that made the movie more enjoyable for me this time was the guy sitting in front of me who was seeing Clue for the first time, and couldn’t help but utter “Oh my God!” anytime something surprised him—which was often. It was fun to hear such a genuine reaction from someone being introduced to the movie for the first time. 

The writing in Clue is clever and sharp. The screenplay was written by Jonathan Lynn, who also directed, and John Landis. Lynn had a unique vision for Clue, setting the film in a New England mansion in 1954. Rather than make the characters jet-setters, Lynn connects them all to Washington, D.C. and the federal government. During the course of the film we learn that all of the characters are being blackmailed. These are people who are living in moral grey zones—which may make it easier for one or more of them to commit the murders that keep occurring throughout the evening. 

What has also made Clue such a cult classic is the fantastic cast, made up of wonderful, hilarious character actors: Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock, Tim Curry as Wadsworth the butler, Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White, Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, Michael McKean as Mr. Green, Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, and Lesley Ann Warren as Miss Scarlet. Clue was responsible for Madeline Kahn being one of my first childhood crushes. (I guess I overlooked the fact that she may have killed all of her husbands.) And there’s also the lovely Colleen Camp as Yvette, the requisite sexy French maid. (Camp won the role in part by showing up to audition in a French maid costume.) 

There are many lines that I did not get when I was a child, like some of the following exchanges:

Colonel Mustard: “How many husbands have you had?”

Mrs. White: “Mine, or other women’s?”

Mr. Green: “So it was you. I was going to expose you.”

Wadsworth: “I know. So I choose to expose myself.”

Colonel Mustard: “Please, there are ladies present!”

Colonel Mustard: “Why is J. Edgar Hoover on your phone?”

Wadsworth: “I don’t know, he’s on everybody else’s, why shouldn’t he be on mine?”

Wadsworth: “Professor Plum, you were once a professor of psychiatry specializing in helping paranoid and homicidal lunatics suffering from delusions of grandeur.”

Professor Plum: “Yes, but now I work for the United Nations.”

Wadsworth: “So your work has not changed.”

Clue was famously released with three different endings. In newspapers, these were designated as endings A, B, and C, so people would know which theater was showing which ending. Of course, this meant that in order to see all three endings, you needed to see the movie three times, which I’m guessing not many people did. I wonder how the movie was screened for critics? Did they get to see all three endings? (It’s hard to believe that Lynn got the studio to go along with the three different endings gimmick.) 

When Clue was released on VHS, and shown on TV, endings A, B, and C were all stitched together and run continuously. The title cards in between the endings made it clear that ending C was the “real” ending. (“But here’s what really happened.”) 

Let’s talk about those endings, shall we? Ending A, the “Miss Scarlet and Yvette did it” ending, is pretty good, and somewhat believable. Where it runs into difficulty is that there’s not a strong motive for Miss Scarlet to kill the motorist and the singing telegram girl. Honestly, it seems unlikely that anyone would shoot the singing telegram girl, as her death is dependent upon someone having the time to rifle through the blackmail evidence against everyone and recognize the singing telegram girl as the patient Professor Plum had an affair with—and then make the quick decision to kill her. 

Ending B, the “Mrs. Peacock killed them all” ending, is a bit odd, as it just doesn’t make a lot of sense for Mrs. Peacock to have killed all these people, most of whom she had no connection to. However, it does give us this great exchange:

Wadsworth: “You see, like the Mounties, we always get our man.”

Mr. Green: “Mrs. Peacock was a man??”

(Colonel Mustard and Wadsworth both slap Mr. Green) 

Ending C makes the most sense to me, as each guest kills someone they were connected to. It’s eventually revealed that Wadsworth is the real Mr. Boddy, and Mr. Green is actually an FBI agent. It also sets up a pretty hilarious final line from McKean.

Mr. Green’s secret identity does make some sense, since he’s the character we learn the least about during the movie. Rather than have Wadsworth detail the offense he’s being blackmailed for, Mr. Green stands up and outs himself as a gay employee in the State Department. Also, none of the additional people who come to the mansion have any connection to Mr. Green. 

But this leads to more questions about Mr. Green. Why is he posing as a gay State Department worker? Maybe he’s getting information about gay State Department workers for the FBI—as they could be susceptible to blackmail. Or is he a stand-in for the real Mr. Green, who alerted the FBI when he got the letter in the mail? If that were the case, Wadsworth would be a lot more thrown off by the presence of the fake Mr. Green. Also, you can see there’s a picture of McKean as Mr. Green in the packet of evidence that Wadsworth has—which would be impossible for Wadsworth to have if McKean’s character were a stand-in for the real Mr. Green. 

Or maybe the FBI knew there was a blackmail ring in DC, and sent undercover agent Mr. Green to work for the State Department, posing as gay in the hopes that he would become a victim of the blackmail ring, and then they could get more information about the blackmailers. That seems like a lot of work. But, in this case, it ended in a very successful smashing of the blackmail ring—albeit with a very high body count. 

So go watch Clue again. Chances are you’ll see or hear something you haven’t noticed before.